Sometimes I think that I was built to carry fear with me. As a kid, sometimes I would be overcome by fear, and it drove me away from things I wanted. I tried to learn to rollerskate, but I would always stop before I got going too fast. I tried to learn gymnastics. I mastered cartwheels, roundabouts, and rolls, but when I tried a backbend, I failed. My coach told me to “just lean back” and “trust yourself.” I could never succeed. I could never let myself fall without the paralyzing fear that my hands would not meet the ground, and instead my head would collide with the unforgiving floor below. I hated the feeling of not having control over what would happen next. And so I quit. I was scared of lots of things. I was scared of pain, embarrassment, but most of all, I was scared of losing the people I cared about. Any time my mom came home late without calling my mind would begin to spin like a water wheel, nervous energy pushing my thoughts to turn ‘round and ‘round until I was dizzy and sick. I would imagine something horrible had happened, maybe a freak accident on Highway 1. My heart would pound until I finally heard tires in the driveway or headlights through the curtains. When my mom sat by my bed at night, I would tell her how afraid I was of something happening that would separate us. I’m not sure where this obsession originated, but it was always present.

In 8th grade, I was forced to face my fears head on. It was a school night. I was sitting on the couch, getting ready to eat dinner in front of the TV with my family. I was impatient to press play on whatever we were watching, but my mom said she had to talk to us about something important. She told me and my brother that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. It was surreal. It didn’t feel real, but I was scared. The fears that had followed me throughout my life, the idea of losing someone that I love, were staring me in the face. In hindsight this reaction to my mother’s illness feels self-absorbed. This person I love was facing something terrible that forced her into months of painful treatment, and I viewed it as a reification of my personal worries. I ascribe this behavior to the unfortunate condition of selfish youth. It may be flawed, but this was my mindset, and it terrified me. It felt wildly unfair, and I cursed fate for days on end. In all honesty I truly believed I had done something to personally spite God. I recounted all my possible sins and begged for forgiveness, somehow overlooking my complete lack of belief or religiousness for all the previous years of my life. Perhaps my hollow prayers for forgiveness were granted, or perhaps it was the combination of catching things early and modern medicine, but my mom went into remission after a few rounds of chemotherapy. 

So did I get over my fears? Did I discover a deep well of bravery within myself and stand against my worries with the strength I needed to support a family member in need? Of course not — I was thirteen and immature, even for my age. My initial terrors were combatted by my mom’s still calmness that assured me it couldn’t be that bad. It was caught early, the treatment was straightforward, the odds were good. If she wasn’t worried, why should I be? Through it all, my mom refused to let me see the extent of her suffering, and instilled in me a genuine belief that everything would be okay.

Only when I got older and was able to develop some of my own strength from age and experience did my mom relay that she did not share this belief. What I didn’t see, in my youthful ignorance, was that my mom carried her own fears, just as I did. Eventually my mom confided in me that in these months she was terrified that the treatment wouldn’t work. Her anxiety was nearly insufferable, and it took everything for her to find the strength to bear it. And not only did she bear it, but she lifted the weight of her own fears above her head, pushing them into the clouds so that I would not see them and let them become my own. She recently told me that when it all became too overwhelming, she would try and stay completely still in hopes the cancer would not grow if she didn’t move.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve grown to see things more clearly. I am not just full of fear and my mom is not just full of strength, we each carry our fears with us, and we each find strength in ourselves and in each other. There are many things in the long haul of life that we have relatively no control over. We grasp at any attempt to gain control over fear, but there is no such solution. There is no way to overpower the fears we will all be forced to face at some point. Fear is something we have no choice but to carry with us, but the support of others makes it manageable. 

There was a point in my life where my mom was strong for me, and now I am strong because of her.